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From: "Alice Turner" <akt@attglobal.net> Subject: (urth) Scipioun's Drem Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 00:19:32 Nigel wrote: > > Alga wrote... > > >>I dug out Chaucer. "The Parliament of Fowls" is a charming Valentine's > >>Day poem. The poet has been reading Scipio Africanus... > > <Click!! > > > (What was that? Oh no, it was the sound of Nigel switching into Mindless > Pedantry Mode...) > > Nothing to do with Crowley, and even less to do with Wolfe, but when > Chaucer writes in "The Parlement of Foules" that he has been reading > "Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun", he almost certainly means that he's been > reading Macrobius' commentary on Cicero's "Somnium Scipionis" ("the Dream > of Scipio"). "Tullyus" refers to Cicero's full name: Marcus Tullius > Cicero. You're completely right: "Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun." > Not sure I'd completely agree with the notion that the narrative tour of > heaven and hell had completely died out by the mid-14th century... Depends > quite what you mean. It long persisted as a literary trope in various > forms, particularly in the various mutations of Renaissance epic, up to and > including Milton, of course, in the 17th century. > > But maybe you meant something more specific. Yes, I did, sorry to be foggy. But you are once again right: post-Dante it beome a very popular literary trope. During the thousand years that stretched from about 400 to 1400, it was related as *truth*, however, by a surprising number of people. That's why I made the UFO reference. Thanks, Adam, for the page citations for LB. -alga *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/